British Hospitals, FedEx Among Thousands Hit by Ransomware

Authorities on Friday said they were investigating a massive ransomware attack that reportedly hit more than 45,000 computers in 74 countries worldwide, including the UK’s NHS England national health service, international delivery service FedEx, and Spanish telecom firm Telefonica.

Security experts have linked the exploit to an earlier leak by the Shadow Brokers, who allegedly accessed a trove of hacking tools from the National Security Agency.

No Patient Care Crisis

Based on early information, a number of organizations reported that they were affected by a ransomware attack linked to the Wanna Decryptor, said NHS Digital spokesperson Tom Donnelly.

There was no immediate evidence that patient data was breached, he said, but the NHS was working with various organizations to confirm that.

The NHS was working with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health, and NHS England to support the affected organizations and recommend steps to mitigate the damage, according to Donnelly.

Patients who need emergency care should visit A&E or access emergency services the same way they normally would, said Anne Rainsberry, NHS incident director.

There are «tried and tested» contingency plans to deal with this incident, she added.

The brunt of the attack was felt in Russia, and the Russian Interior Ministry posted a statement confirming that it had localized an attack on thousands of personal computers, Kaspersky Lab reported.

Spain’s National Cybersecurity Institute confirmed that a number of companies were targeted. Telefonica, the country’s largest phone company, confirmed that some computers on its internal corporate network were hit, but it did not provide details.

Microsoft Link

The Ransomware attack is linked to the WannaCry ransomware family, and it is spreading aggressively around the world to other organizations, said Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike.

The attack thus far reportedly has breached telecom systems, hospitals, doctors’ surgeries, healthcare organizations, and gas and electric utilities in several European and Asian countries, ranging from the UK to Russia, Pakistan, Spain and others, he noted.

«The group behind the attack does not appear to be picky about the nation or sector it is targeting,» Meyers told the E-Commerce Times.

The attack vector has «all the hallmarks of a traditional computer worm,» he noted, adding that before now CrowdStrike had not seen a large-scale ransomware campaign that used a self-propagating technique at this scale, which makes this attack unique.

Wana encrypts files using the AES-128 cipher and demands a bitcoin ransom that increases as time passes on, according to Meyers. The files are appended with a .wncry file extension. Demands from this attack include requests for US$300 or $600 in bitcoin for a decryption key.

The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution, according to the Microsoft bulletin, if an attacker should send specially crafted messages to a Microsoft server message block 1.0 (SMBv1) server.

Homeland Secure

«We are aware of reports of ransomware affecting multiple entities in Europe and Asia and are coordinating with our international cyber partners,» DHS spokesperson Scott McConnell told the E-Commerce Times in a statement.

The DHS «stands ready to support any international or domestic partner’s request for assistance,» he added, noting that the agency routinely provides cybersecurity assistance upon request, including «technical analysis and support.» Information shared with DHS as part of these efforts is confidential.

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Did you know ?

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide.

Approximately 3.2 billion people use the internet. Out of this, 1.7 billion of internet users are Asians. In fact, it is estimated that approximately 200 billion emails and 3 billion Google search would have to wait if the internet goes down for a day.

30,000 websites are hacked every day. Highly effective computer software programs are used by cybercriminals to automatically detect vulnerable websites which can be hacked easily.

First webcam was created at the University Of Cambridge to monitor the Trojan coffee pot. A live 128×128 grayscale picture of the state of the coffee pot was provided as the video feed.

Internet sends approximately 204 million emails per minute and 70% of all the mails sent are spam. 2 billion electrons are required to produce a single email.

First tweet was done on 21st March, 2006 by Jack Dorsey and the first YouTube video to be uploaded was “Meet At Zoo” at 8:27 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, 2005 by Jawed Karim.

The majority of internet traffic is not generated by humans, but by bots and malware. According to a recent study conducted by Incapsula, 61.5% or nearly two-thirds of all the website traffic is caused by Internet bots.

In 2005, broadband internet had a maximum speed of 2 Megabits per second. Today, 100Mbps download speeds are available in many parts of the country. But experts warn that science has reached its limit and fiber optics can take no more data.

The first spam email was sent in 1978 over ARPNET by a guy named Gary Thuerk. He was selling computers.

Online shoppers can buy cars, clothes and millions of other things with the click of a button and figurative swipe of a credit card. In fact, U.S. consumers spend $1,200-$1,300 per year online, but that number will increase by 44%, to $1,738, by 2016. In that year, ecommerce sales are expected to hit $327 billion.

By 2016 the total transaction value of mobile payments in the U.S. hit $62.24 billion. The user base is still relatively small, with only 7.9 million users in 2012. Usage should grow during the next few years to over 50 million mobile payment users by 2017.

51% of people who did not complete a purchase on a mobile device stopped because they did not feel comfortable entering their credit card details

81 percent of people research online before buying it either offline or online.

Only 60 percent of people use search engines to search the products, the rest 40 percent directly land on the ecommerce portals or have direct links

An average online shopper visits the target platform at least 3 times before finalizing the product.

33 percent of online sales take place after 6PM, likely due to the fact that people get back from offices around then, giving them some private time to think of themselves and their needs.